For my self portrait I chose to use colors found in nature; those colors being blue, green, and brown. This is an analogous color scheme as they are adjacent to one another on the color wheel.

The images in the collage represent me as I see myself: an outdoorsy geek. I am a professional software engineer by trade and craft, but I try to spend as much time outside enjoying nature as possible.

The wide expanse of blue represents the infinite sky and the vastness of nature. It humbles the rest of the objects in the collage as it does in real life. The green tree represents life, wandering in many different directions yet firmly attached to its roots. It strives to reach the heavens but remains grounded in reality.

The figure in the collage is a stack of books, representing my voracious appetite for the printed page. I read whenever I can find a spare minute -- in the morning while waking up, during the day while having lunch or taking a break from work, and at night before falling asleep. The figure of books also represents the knowledge gained from what I have read since I retain much of what I read.

The head of the figure is a portable digital assistant, or PDA. This represents my analytical nature, always questioning, interpreting, processing. In grade school I was called somewhat derisively " The computer who wore tennis shoes", a witticism that was no doubt inspired by the movie of the same name by Walt Disney.

Lisa and I started this site back in 1997 when we finally were able to get a broadband internet connection. We hoped that we could create a place to share our interests and parts of our lives with our extended family and other like-minded people. While the various demands on our time haven't allowed us to update the site as often as we'd like, we feel that we've made a good start. If you're a family member and would like access to the private portion of the site, please send me an email and ask for the password.

Technical Information

If you're interested, the computer that hosts our web site is located in our basement. It started out as an old Pentium 166Mhz with 64Mb of RAM and about 23 gigabytes of disk space but has since been upgraded to an Athlon 2200+ with 512Mb of ram and 100G of disk space It was cobbled together out of a pile of spare parts that always seems to appear as I upgraded one computer or another around here. This machine, known as both dmz and atnetsend, acts as our firewall, router, web server and mail server. Not bad, eh?

I can hear you asking, "Why in the world would he do that?". Well, I always wanted to learn more about the internet and how web servers worked, so I decided to learn by doing: I'd run my own server. Once that decision was made, the rest naturally followed. I didn't want to spend too much money doing this, so once I had the computer put together I installed Linux, a free version of the powerful Unix operating system. Unlike the Microsoft Windows operating system, Linux has the ability to keep running for months, if not years before the machine needs to be rebooted. Atnetsend was once up and running for over 165 days straight before I shut it down to install a new hard disk.

You've arrived at a place so far removed from the hustle and bustle of the Internet, it just has to be At Net's End.

We have dedicated this secluded niche in cyberspace to our interests and hobbies. If you enjoy nature, photography, pets, genealogy, poetry, the great outdoors, or computer programming, or if you are just looking for a place to relax after a long day
Welcome!

Sit back, take your time... explore our site. There is quite a bit here to entertain you. There are many links here for the New England area: Animal Support and Rescue, Veterinary resources, Wolves, Genealogy, helpful software, and much more!

We are glad you stopped by, let us know what you think of things here At Net's End.